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(forget I said that)

On Friday I Hoosed for a bit with Matt, AJ and Nicky, then some Torchies who turned up. I was supposed to go to the Park Room with Lara and Seth, but when I got there I found - as they already had - that there were about half a dozen people there, so I - as they already had - left. I spoke to Seth briefly on the phone (commenting "We could do better", which he agreed with) and then went back for a last few minutes at the Hoose.

Saturday was a pretty mixed kind of day. There was to be a post-Beltane beach party out at Tyninghame sands in east Lothian. Just as I was on the point of leaving with Steve and Sandy I opened the car door at the wrong moment, and it got totalled by a passing truck.

Consequently, I'm in the market for a new car door. Anyone selling one?

Fortunately we were to be driving out with Sara (another Torchie) and some of her friends, and her brother Wahid was an absolute star. First he offered to go and fetch a door if we could find someone nearby with one, and then when we couldn't he helped us bash it flat enough to be strapped closed, and after we'd swept up the glass we went to the picnic anyway.

Steve and I hung back a bit and so didn't see they way the others went, so we arrived at the wrong bit of coast and turned the wrong way (because it was sandy, while the bit between us and where we were meant to be isn't), ending up on what the maps call Sandy Hirst before turning back. Steve had raised someone on the phone by then, but as we'd reached the isle it didn't save us any time.

After a slight walk we got to the right beach. where various people were ambling, digging, building or playing and a few others had only just left. Some red people were making an extremely rambling and elaborate sandcastle just below the high-water mark so they could watch it be washed away later. It turned out that as we're coming off the dark of the moon at the moment, the high tide was much lower than the previous one - it survived unscathed. They were reportedly a bit peeved. Than was making something circular, which eventually turned out to be an astonishing sand-carved dragon, with a woman lying within its coils. She wasn't life-size, but the whole thing still came in well over ten feet across. There was a fire, and after Steve got to work a small barbecue too. We fetched more wood - an awful lot more wood - and chatted (Wahid turned out to be very into drumming and later was joining in heartily - talented bloke). The drums arrived, about dusk (including a proper drumkit which looked very odd set up on the rocks but sounded just fine), and things got going just in time for four of us to leave and head back to the Emmental party. Due to it being dark and all of us having taken circuitous routes to get there, we took a daft route back and were more than slightly late. I was waxing paranoid the whole way back, as the roads seemed to be white-with-a-red-bit with cop cars seeking to ask searching questions about my door.

The party was really an extended chat with four or five people over booze, but at that time in the morning it was just fine. Today everything I own has been mainly smelling of woodsmoke, which has been both excellent in itself and has been tempting me to make a move on the Laphroaig.

Today I bought a book (Brookmyre) and a couple of OS maps (1:25k, Edinburgh through east to Dunbar) and finished Billie Morgan - I haven't really been reading since Whitby, but I got back into it easily and it's really very good. One scene I remember reading out at Glastonbury '98 (I think), and there's a reference to sitting in casualty after a fight, looking at pictures of desert islands. She doesn't like the Guardian much, but after all it's from the wrong side of the Pennines.

Slight supplemental: have Laphroaig now. Even happier. I went to see grahamb this evening, dropping off a few things and having some tea and chat. Very fine. I should do it more often. He pointed out that a skip outside had a discarded Xerox inkjet/scanner/fax combo that he'd probably have scavenged himself had he not several too many printers in the house already. I have it back here and it powers up OK. I don't know what I'll do with it if it still works, though.